Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

There is one less robot exploring the solar system today. MESSENGER, which has orbited Mercury for four years, finally ran out of fuel and crashed into the planet at 17:26 UT on Thursday, April 30, 2015.

Emily Lakdawalla

At last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, the MESSENGER team held a press briefing to share results from the recent few months of incredibly low-altitude flight over Mercury's surface. The mission will last only about five weeks more.

Bill Dunford

MESSENGER is revealing the first planet in sharp detail.

Van Kane

Van Kane explains three factors that make exploring Europa hard—factors that can make a mission concept that seems like less actually be more.

Jason Davis

A new video shows what a traveler aboard Mercury's MESSENGER spacecraft would see as they zipped over the planet's north polar region.

Emily Lakdawalla

The two spacecraft currently orbiting the two innermost planets are both flying low in their orbits in the final phases of their missions. MESSENGER just performed a rocket burn to raise its orbit slightly, while Venus Express did the opposite.

Emily Lakdawalla

Vignettes from dozens of LPSC talks: GRAIL and LADEE at the Moon; ice and craters and conglomerates and organics and gullies on Mars; polar deposits and volatile elements on Mercury; tectonics on Enceladus; and more, until my brain was so full I could barely speak.

Bill Dunford

Animated maps of the planets show the spheres in motion.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've been fascinated by Mercury's hollows ever since MESSENGER discovered them. Two recent papers look at where they are found to try to figure out how they form.

Bill Dunford

Striking terrain discovered by the MESSENGER probe.

Karl Battams

Planetary transits of the Sun by Mercury and Venus don't come along very often, and when they do we make a big deal of it because, well, it's really cool!

Emily Lakdawalla

Some notes from the first day of the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting on Mercury.

Bill Dunford

We have new pictures from planet one.

Bill Dunford

Pushing back the frontier, and filling in the blank spaces on the map.

Mat Kaplan

You can be part of a planetwide group photo as Cassini and MESSENGER turn their cameras Earthward on July 19.

Bill Dunford

There's a cool new way to explore the first planet.

Bill Dunford

Nothing reflects the romance of deep space exploration more than the evocative names of places on the planets and moons.

Bill Dunford

They look so similar they can be hard to tell apart, but each hides its own mysteries.

Emily Lakdawalla

Note the special time! In this week's Planetary Society hangout at 5pm PDT / midnight UTC, I'll talk with MESSENGER deputy principal investigator Larry Nittler about what MESSENGER has accomplished in its prime and extended missions at Mercury, and what it stands to do if awarded a mission extension.

Bill Dunford

Dispatches from five different worlds--all sent by robotic spacecraft on the same day.